Fires of Passion
"Top 10 Tips to Impress That Special Sailor" Valentine read off the cover of the newest issue of Marine Magazine. "How the hell does this stay in business." He muttered aloud as he glanced at the upper left corner, advertising the next swimsuit issue. "Oh right." He stood from his bed, tossing the magazine to the floor and walked into his closet, grabbing various articles of clothing. He chose to keep it simple that day, opting for a plain white t-shirt and a pair of black pants both fitting him rather nicely. He then slipped on a pair of black boots and his usual half mask over his right eye. He then grabbed his hair, tying most of it back into a ponytail. He left only a few bangs that mostly covered the mask. He glanced at himself as he passed a mirror, nodding as he exited the room. He quickly ate some breakfast before pouring himself a glass of wine. He drank as he stared at the vineyard outside his window, smiling. It was then that a wall mounted Den Den Mushi began beeping loudly. "Right right, training session." He spoke, swiftly tapping the snail to quiet it. He took another sip of the wine before disappearing from the room. Valentine appeared on a remote island in Takamagahara, many of them were used for private training, allowing Marines to not worry about damaging the training grounds that classes normally used. The island was quite large in size, able to most likely accommodate 3 large battles. It was quite lush with greenery, though only the center had large groups of trees. They were otherwise sparse, the greenery being mostly waist level at highest. With a quick haki scan he realized he was the only one there. He had set his alarm a little early. "Oh well." He shrugged as he sat on a stump, sipping his wine as he waited on Sol. It didn't take long for Sol to arrive, in the form of a whisp of plasma. A soft sphere of white fire hovered over the greenery, searching for a large which could accommodate Sol's true mammoth size. Once it did, it burst in the giantess true form. Giants were known to be largest species on average, but, even among them, the vice Admiral size was on a class of its own, making the tallest nearby trees looking like grass straws. Sol took many steps back so that her view on Valentine wasn't shrouded by her generous bust. She donned a typical training gear: khaki light pants, striped sports shoes and black tank-top shirt endowed with a sports bra. Massive pieces of garment, tailored to her immense size by the same official clothiers who manufactured her official uniform- a given, she the giantess held one of the Marine's highest rank; though, as indicated by some nicely weaved patches, Sol preferred to darn her clothes by herself whenever possible, as she didn't want to waste good fabric on every minor scratch. The giantess inhaled the morning breeze. Fresh air, soft sunlight, and a temperate climate: easily the most comfortable time and place one could find for a training session. Sol was incredibly thankful that her peer in rank, one of the most renowned instructors in the whole Marine organization, had decided to spend some of his precious time to help her with her training. Most people, even those in awe of Sol daunting size, would find ridiculous to even attempt getting on the level of a Yonko; yet Valentine didn't sneer nor debased her, but offered more of chance. That was the true strength of the Marines: commonality in the face of the adversity. Something Pirates, greedy and barbaric they were, could never hope to understand. "I am ready, Valentine-domo". Sol addressed the Instructor. "How should we begin our training session? I usually begin with some stretching exercises, to get my muscle on the right level of elasticity for the hardest part of the workout". The sky was extremely bright for a moment followed by a massive shadow being cast over Valentine. "Oh, Sol you're here." He chuckled, taking another sip of his wine. It was always quite the sight to behold, seeing Sol at her full height. Valentine looked up at the woman, taking a few steps back to make sure he could see her face. "Well, I trust that you haven't done any working out the past few days, as we agreed. I want you fresh and at your fullest today." The glass disappeared from his hand as he stretched his arms above his head. "Good, stretch everything out make sure you're nice and relaxed cause we're about to have some fun. But before we begin I have a couple questions to run by you. These are more so I can tailor this lesson specifically as this isn't general ed." He appeared in the air, hovering a couple yards from her face as she stretched. "So first off do you fight in your human or giant form most? Pick whichever you use more often as it'll make it more natural in actual combat. Secondly, what do you want to work on right now. I can help you with most things but we have to pick one to work on first. Devil Fruit or Haki are probably our best options to start with. Finally, we need to work on weaponizing those tears of yours." Valentine finished with a small joke, awaiting Sol's reply. "Well, I wish they could; unfortunately, I am no Blackbeard, so no double Devil Fruit". Sol replied, jesting... but maybe not too much. She wasn't too comfortable with her oversensitive of hers, the one who made her weep rivers everytime something moved her the slightest. She found some solace in tears, as a way to express her emotional closeness to people in distress, but they were so copious they felt comical at times. "Well, Valentine-dono, I tend to favor my giant form in most confrontations. My size and strength and sheer elemental power are enough to overwhelm most opponents; whenever that doesn't work, I condense my mass in a smaller frame to better evade blows. I also tend to use my Devil Fruit as the basis of my offense, with Haki only as a complement to it". "Alright then, shouldn't be a problem." The man spun away from Sol, a guitar appeared in his hands. "Gimme a sec while I tune this." He called out, fiddling with the strings. As Sol warmed up four ethereal beings appeared around her. Two held swords and were slightly above her field of vision. One was hidden by her bust on the ground, aiming a hammer at her toes. The last fired a rifle at her from behind her head. All of them made no sound, being of the ethereal plane. "So Sol if you're done stretching my guitar is almost tuned." Valentine continued, strumming the strings as he made his final checks. "All right, I'll be waiting". Sol gazed below her bustline whilst making her neck stretching routine; her breasts turned in rings of plasma, which a large hole in the middle to allow the giantess to watch directly on her feet. Sol supernatural sense of hearing and strong Kenbunshoku were generelly enough to deal with the little people and objects below, but there was always the possibility of missing an object or, God forbid, to step on innocents. She was so used to it she almost did it on reflex every time she lowered her gaze. A manifestation of devil power was already aiming at her toes. Sol's Haki flared; three other manifestations were attacking. The training had already begun. Sol let her legs loose, falling on the ground in the push up position. From there, she pinned down the ethereal being with her massive, Haki infused palm, while avoiding the attacks from above. Without losing her grip, she stretched her obscenely thick legs in and hand stand, slamming them on the two creatures on the higher position before they could land another blow, then she caught the third one with her hand as if was a small flea. A white, amorphous substances- Sol's plasma- sprouts from the points she had struck the manifestations with; soon, it was colored with the black ichor of Bosushoku. Only then her form switched on more radical terms, her legs and arms forming a large cascade of burning substance which joined the hand still pinning down the creature. Sol returned to normal, but remained a bubble of plasma and Haki on her hands, all containing the ethereal creatures. She rose her sphere and offered it to Valentine. "Valentine-san, while I do take advantage of my Devil Fruit, I don't want to be complacent on it. Those who think of me as a big, clumsy lumbering giants will find them very mistaken". Sol snorted; that exercise of gymnastic was maybe unnecessary, given she could just shrink down and the catch them, but she always maintained the belief that physical agility was paramount condition for a fight, coming before Logia mastery. "I am actually quite on dance, from break-dancing to classical ballet". Valentine strummed his guitar, a harsh but delightful sound flowing from the instrument. "You failed." He stated, not looking up from his guitar. The figures disappeared from the bubble, reappearing in the air briefly as they waved at Sol, before fading. "To have to use your haki to identify them, that is a failure. Not to mention dealing with them in a very excessive way. 1000 different attacks from 15 different angels at least. All could have and probably would have hit you during that." Valentine continued. "If you can't even sense opponents near you without haki you're in a bad place." He disappeared from view entirely as Sol would feel and eerie feeling behind her. He then immediately appeared before her again. "You feel that?" He asked, continuing before she could answer. "Usually when people are looking directly at us or standing behind us, without even looking at or hearing them we sense them. It's not haki, I can't really tell you what it is. But it's something we have and it's something that can be trained." Valentine grinned as he began strumming the guitar. "So turn your haki off and close your eyes. Listen to this song and prepare to get hit, a lot. It's a sense most don't know about and a hard one to train, but we're gonna keep at it until no one can sneak up on you." Sol bit her lip; she wanted too much to show, at the cost of wasting unnecessary energy. Sol knew she had to be more conservative, more polished. Her desire to prove her agility, that she was not a sluggish colossus was evidently among the biases, she needed to correct. "I will, Valetine-sama". Sol closed her eyes, preparing her mind and body to follow the tune and the subsequent onslaught. "I am ready". "Take the first few hits, just get used to it. Sensing them that is." Valentine spoke as he began to play. "For this first exercise they will be attacking on rhythm." As the music filled the air, the area filled with ethereal warriors. "Begin." The numbers of attacks felt to Sol like a swarm of stings biting all at once; not harmful in any serious capacity, but definitively stingy. The giantess followed at first her instinct, and timed her dodges corresponding to the peaks of the rhythm; she knew her reflexive Logia form couldn’t work, so she had to morph herself consciously to avoid the blows. It worked the first few times, but the blows started to become more erratic, often rushing or dragging a few beats before landing. Sol understood Valentine the music to help her clear her mind, not giving something predictable to rely on with her muscle memory. So, instead of using it as way to predict the next blow, she let her mind flow with the rhythm, aiming for the highest state of relaxation. A process like that was somewhat similar to how she utilized Kenbunshoku, but the mental effort went in the opposite direction: she did not focus on precise events or precise intents but welcomed everything in the most passive state she could. Making her mind a sensitive net rather than a focused scalpel, and let the body react accordingly. Easier said and done, though: with all the stingy nuisances pestering her body, her first and natural reaction was to get stiffer and rigid. Fortunately, Valentin’s music was of great help in this regard. A wild song of fiery passion, one that makes you let your body loose in the rapture of dance when played in most hardcore raves. That was right: Sol had to feel like dancing, before feeling blows. The giantess was becoming calmer and calmer each second, despite the great intensity of the guitar. With so, the pain for the blows augmented, yet oddly enough it was not distracting: it was like they were hitting on a softer and softer material, one where sensations roamed freely across. Sol never felt her skin tingling more, squirming in a liquid shape to avoid the swarming bites. Squirming so much that it started bending and stretching even before being hit, leaving a void in the place where should be skin. In a gradual process, Sol’s skin was acting like an organism on its own, detecting preys with the ganglia of her aura. She still couldn’t hear the sound preceding the stabs and slashes, nor the breath of the demons, she couldn’t even pinpoint where they were positioned, if she was asked. Sol just felt crawls on her skin on a level she had never experienced before, and her tingling body reacted in accord, for pure instinct. Nothing existed for her but stings, tingles and the ecstatic strumming of guitar. "Ha ha, excellent." Valentine exclaimed as he continued to play. With time Sol had begun to embrace her most basic senses. It was harder for most, lacking the heavily enhanced senses that Valentine possessed. She was doing it though. He sat there strumming his erratic tune as the onslaught of spirits continued. "And now for your solo." He called out, the music cutting off abruptly as the souls pressed their attack. Unknown to Sol, the souls invoked their own haki, making her logia form useless against their blades. This was the real test of durability and mental strength. The blades would draw blood, Valentine saw to that. What was the point of a high stakes training method if the stakes weren't well, high. Without music to guide her, Sol had to try and keep her mental peace in her focus. She focused on her breath, the quiet sound of nature; she had entered far enough in her meditative state she could almost fell in a trance if it were not for the pain. Pain that felt much stronger than before, burning: Valentine had evidently his own creation infuse their blow with Bosushoku Haki. Sol's skin was normally thicker than steel, capable of withstanding cannonball strikes without a blemish, but those blows were penetrating something so soft and relaxed it could be compared to butter. A reason more to avoid being struck as much as possible. The first bits, delivered in the few moments of break-in, struck deep in her flesh; she adapted quickly if anything being even more focused on the creeping sensation in her skin which preceded any blow. Her passive sense was blaring like an alarm, signals upon signals of incoming swords strike, with which she responded by reeling back her plasmatic flesh. Pain ended up diminishing, though the irks were augmented. Slowly but steadily, Sol was getting the full grasp of her passive sense and catching up to any blow. In the end, the pain was over, and she felt nothing but pleasant tickles. Valentine watched patiently as Sol slowly began to adapt to the attacks, slowly growing more and more comfortable with herself and the sense. It had been a couple of hours since they began. Without making a sound a thousand spirits appeared in the air all around her, far enough that the sense wouldn't reach. Each readied a bullet, pouring their haki into it. "Sol I want you to stand up now, eyes close no haki same as usual." Valentine called to her. As Sol would begin to stand the bullets would rain from every direction, every angle. Thousands of them would hit her at the same time. This was his true test. Dodging all the bullets at once required not only incredible use of the new trick he'd taught her but the mental fortitude to perform this action while in motion and concentrated on the task of standing up. It was no easy task and the dangers were real, but Valentine believed that situations like these brought about the most change. When the risk was real so was the result. "Ok, Valentine-san". Sol stood tall again, her posture bearing the same amount of relaxation. And that followed a violent shake irking her body, her skin trembling like an earthquake. Many attacks were coming, more than she was ever prepared to fight. Her first instinct was to use Haki, having her body hardened to avoid the blow. Sol fought against that instinct, cause the point of the exercise was to maintain the least amount of resistance to danger till nothing could ever hit her. Unfortunately, that second of struggle had her lose that blissful concentration. At that moment, a swarm of bullets hit Sol; she felt naked, hurt in every pore of her body. She gritted her teeth and breathed heavily: opposing the pain was useless, she just had to welcome it until her body reacted on its own. Calm down, concentrate on your surroundings. Another flurry of shots, other pain. She hummed the song in her head. A third blast; half of the blows missed, the others hit. Sol's mind runned to a happy memory, the day she had met her darling, just for the second she needed to make her mind a bit less tense before the next hail. A fourth flurry, then a fifth one. She was feeling her body exploding with puncturing pains, but it was getting easier at each flurry. The exercise continued for so long, the time she couldn't tell: but things had reached past the point of brutal trial and error. This time, her body was truly water among the blows: a tingling sense of force, and then slipping away. A pleasurable sensation of freedom from any fatigue and pain, both physical and mental. Valentine observed as the volleys rained down on Sol. For most it would be dismal to see their ally being shot again and again. For Valentine he was far more focused on her improvement. It went on for a long time, He questioned if he should stop, seeing the amount of blood leaking out of her. However each consecutive volley brought more and more resistance from Sol. So he pressed onwards, the hail continuing. Finally as another volley rained down Sol slipped through all of it and Valentine immediately ceased the exercise. "Well done." He shouted, clapping his hands as he moved over to her. "Well done Sol. You took that up faster than I expected. He nodded as a couple souls appeared and he handed them a couple first aid kits from beneath his coat. As the doctors tended to the bleeding and patched up any wounds, Valentine sat with Sol. "So first order of business, no training for a couple days. Get some rest and let your body heal itself. That's the absolute next step." He poured himself a glass of wine, swirling the cup in his hand. "Then we're going to meet up and do this damn thing again, but the next time I'm gonna throw some more wrenches in. Probably even include the spar I was originally gonna do today." He put the glass to his lips, taking in the sweet scent of it before downing the delicacy. "I hope this helped though. After-all we spent a whole day here, you must be starving huh." He raised an eyebrow at her. Sol whistled; there wasn't a single part of her that didn't hurt like some kind of hellish punishment. Sol could count with a single hand the predicaments were ended up being so bloody and bruised, even among the most tense fight. Even when she had faced the legendary Yonko Empress on her own, though surely for the latter was underestimating her. Belittling her, thinking she was just an oversized pawn in a game of kings. Well, another music was to be faced. With that training, Sol felt she had awakened something entirely unique to complement her fighting technique. She was pushing the already trained reflexes of a Logia to their next, logical conclusion: when they could not just transform but morph and avoid matter on their own, on an unconscious level and without an active and taxing use of Haki. Once mastered such skill, nothing would have hurt Sol again. Should Legs ever face her again, she was coming for a world of hurt. Something else was also awakening inside Sol: a rumble, which turned in a tremor and then in a quake. Her empty stomach thumped like an erupting volcano, shaking the entire island in the process. The giantess' cheeks flushed violently; tears flowed from her eyes in amounts waterfalls could envy. "T-thank you, Valentine-san. You are an instructor a-almost as good as B-Bambina-sama. Sniff..." Filled with joy and gratitude, she lifted Valentine and smothered him in her bosom, giving him probably the biggest and warmest embrace the Instructor had ever received.